


Nothing Fills the Space

by kiashyel



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-08-17 06:12:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8133302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiashyel/pseuds/kiashyel
Summary: Spoilers for Critical Role episode 68. Set shortly after the events that occurred on Glintshore.
Vex'ahlia grieves for Percival.





	

**Author's Note:**

> _I'm sure it takes awhile to face a world that took yours from you...a hand without a pulse, you wanna fight but lost your cause...but nothing fills the space of things you can't replace..._  
>  Favorite Pair of Eyes by Steve Moakler

* * *

At first it's the void that pains her the most. Gone are the faint whiffs of metal and smoke and gunpowder that alerted her to his presence, absent is the faint almost-touch of his hand as it would hover in the air beside hers should she need him for support.

Next it's the expectation that nearly kills her. Without realizing she's doing so, she finds herself listening for his voice and is disappointed not to hear it. She looks for the glint of light that flared off his glasses or the shock of his white hair. She waits to hear his droll remarks peppered throughout conversations.

Now it's the noises the others make that threatens to drive her mad. Grog's loud sniffling and Keyleth's broken sobs ring in her ears and Scanlan's soft compassionate murmurs are enough to bring her to the point of near explosion but it's Vax's tears that are the detonator. He makes no noise as he cries but she's sure that she can hear the racket the tears make as they race down his cheeks.

The fire in her bones is white hot and she cannot be idle any longer. The flames within push her to action and she runs until she reaches the bottommost basement of the mansion. The spa is quiet but Vex hears the sonic boom of water and ringing metal as echoes of the past reverberate around her, of a cannonball contest that seems to have taken place in a previous life. In a whole other existence.

In the farthest, darkest corner of the room Vex places a hand to the wall to steady the trembling anguish that threatens to topple her. The stone is warm from the heat of the sauna and it shocks her for the briefest of moments. Since it happened, her fingers have held onto the memory of his skin, how she felt the softness of it growing cool, then cold, as the heat of his blood began to fade. 

The first time she says his name it's whispered on an inhale. She needs to keep him near, hold some part of him in her heart and lungs and veins.

_Percy_ .

The word gains no purchase and tumbles back into the air.

Tears drip as she tries again and again and again. _Percival. Percy dear. Percival, darling. Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo the Third_.

Each time she says his name, her voice grows louder. In time the whispers turn into screams. His name becomes a strange foreign tongue, incapable of translation or understanding except by those fluent in the language of grief.  
  
Every shout evokes another image in her mind, images of a hundred lifetimes that he should have lived, and Vex feels herself dying a little more with every breath it takes to expel the limitless potential Percival left behind. All of the things he'll never be able to do have turned into a deafening silence that Vex desperately needs to drown out.  
  
When her legs can no longer hold her upright, Vex finally crumples against the wall and slides to the floor. She is unsurprised to see Vax standing at the edge of the shadows. He comes forward, collapsing at her side and scoops her into his arms with a voiceless sympathy.  
  
She pleads, "Talk to her, brother. She has to send him back."  
  
"Vex, I..." he starts to say.  
  
"NO!" Vex shouts him down. The hoarseness of her voice makes the command sound like the bark of a feral creature. She is wild in her sadness. "You have to bring him back! The world needs him. Make her understand!"  
  
His voice is firm but not unkind when he tells her, "Don't you think I would drag him back by the scruff of the neck, if I could?"  
  
"Why can't you, then?" she demands angrily. "You're her champion. What fucking good are you if you can't get her to listen to reason?"  
  
"Vex'ahlia, have a heart," Vax tries to calm her down.  
  
"No," she growls. "My heart is with Percy. I gave it to him ages ago though he never knew it. My heart was in his hands when he died and now it's gone with him wherever he is. I need it back, I need _him_ back. Please. Please Vax," she erupts into a fresh wave of sobs. "She was human once, a human who could love, she should understand my pain. My world doesn't work without him in it. This family, Vox Machina, doesn't work without Percival."  
  
Vax pulls her head to his shoulder and lets his sister cry until she is empty. The hollow in her chest is fragile and it crumbles at the edges of the vacant place where her heart used to be. She shakes as she cries, sending thorns of pain through her body. Her bones scuff and splinter with sorrow. She is breaking from the inside out.

She doesn’t know how, but Vax manages to haul the fractured pieces of her out of the third basement and into her room. She does not know when he leaves but she realizes the stillness of the air signals she is alone.

Vex lays awake. Her lungs are beaten and bruised but she continues to whisper Percival’s name with each ragged breath, suffocating on an impossible hope that he can somehow hear her and that the sound of her voice will lead him back.

Eventually Vex crashes into slumber. She dreams but does not recognize it such.

In her sleep, she is scrambling through the darkness blindly searching the black spaces around her for Percy and for her heart, two irreplaceable items that she is desperate to have with her again. But the silence is loud, too loud, and it puts her off her quarry. She fumbles through the shadows of her dreams and awakens empty handed.

Vex blinks away the new tears. The hollow of her chest aches, the raw nerve endings, stripped and bare, send a shockwave of trauma through every cell of her being.

It’s the void that pains her the most.


End file.
